Exploring Practice in Photography Multimedia Production
Initial Ideas
Anxiety Visualised I’ve always wanted to try and put the feelings of anxiety or panic into moving image form. Photographs can do a lot to create an atmosphere or invoke a feeling in the viewer, but the addition of sound in a moving image piece can be incredibly powerful. Using words to explain a panic/anxiety attack to someone who’s never experienced those feelings turns out to be surprisingly difficult. With sound and moving image, there are various ways I could portray strong feelings of anxiety or panic. One is from the first person, with the camera acting as the character’s vision. Through panicked/erratic motion, editing, and an overloading of sound, I might be able to get close to creating a panicked feeling. Alternatively, I could do something very different. For example, someone alone in their room. Using sound effects I could create a tense uneasy atmosphere for the viewer. Sounds of a heartrate increasing, heavy breathing and picking nails, could be coupled with shaky hands and goosebumps on the skin. This idea could easily manifest in many different ways, but these 2 visuals are what came to mind first. They would play out like a moving contemporary art piece, and could loop indefinitely, symbolising just how much of a vicious cycle people can be in. The two photographs on the right are some quick shots I took to try and capture the kind of aesthetic and mood that I’d be aiming for. It was immediately clear how big an impact minor changes can have. Colour grading/temperature drastically changed how I perceived the image. The hardness of light and amount of light sources also had a massive impact. These will certainly act similarly when shooting moving image, and I would consider these aspects of the utmost importance.
Initial Ideas
Waking Up - Hyperlapse Idea and recce
‘Waking Up’ is an idea I have for an early morning Bristol hyperlapse. A hyperlapse is similar to a time-lapse, though the camera also moves. They are far harder to pull off well, but can look far more interesting than static timelapses. This hyperlapse would take place in multiple places around the city, like some of these that I have photographed. The primary aim of the film would be to capture the beauty of the city waking up. I’d have shots of the morning rush, taken from tall buildings - I’ve identified several car parks that could be used. I would include the inner city locations juxtaposed with slightly more picturesque locations, like castle park and along the river. Unlike in my recce shots which are all around 50mm, the hyperlapse would be better suited to a mix of focal lengths. Sound is still an important factor for this idea, and there are multiple ways to approach it. In most circumstances, a hyplerlapse may simply use a soundtrack. This could work, though royalty free music would be needed. Alternatively, the soundtrack could be made purely of city ambience, or overlayed over an instrumental music track.
Initial Ideas
Research Christian Boltanski - L’homme qui tousse
L’homme qui touse is the French title of Christian Boltanski’s haunting 1969 work, and seems to translate to ‘The Man Who Coughs.’ This work, especially when seen in person, is an incredible example of the power of moving image. The production value is poor, and the blood doesn’t appear at all realistic, yet this doesn’t hamper its tense and uneasy atmosphere. This powerful sense of dread and tension is created in various ways, the first being sound. The intense coughing in this piece is constant and unforgiving, though also sounds realistic. As a viewer, you aren’t given a moments rest, the sound never has more than a few seconds of calm. The sound of the piece is literally just coughing, hauntingly exaggerated by echo. The visuals of the piece, while also somewhat sickening, are held up by the strength of the sound in my opinion. Still, the well lit scene and costume design do a lot for the disturbing piece. The context that it’s in also has a huge impact. In the linked video, you can tell that the sound is massively amplified by echo. It’s unclear whether this echo is part of the piece, but it seems more likely that it’s a part of the installation the short film is playing in. I believe that the piece is playing it its original format, being projected through a roll of film. The specks and imperfections on the film are accompanied with the sound of the spool spinning, all being played in a darkened room. With all the elements of the piece and context combined, it does a good job of creating an unsettling experience for viewers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l03Re9i-26Q
Research Mayeul Akpovi - Paris in Motion
Paris in motion is a lot like what I would be hoping to achieve with my ‘Waking Up’ idea if we were to use it. It’s similar to a regular time-lapse, but the moving camera makes for a far more interesting viewing. Creating a video like this would be a much more technical task than most others, though this does a lot to hold up the piece. A work like this achieves its merit though being amazing visually and by being hard to create. Personally, a work of this type doesn’t seem particularly interesting to me, but I do believe it’s good practise to learn the necessary skills. Paris in motion is really just a demonstration of these skills, and has no real underlying narrative. It’s meant more as a way to show off the beauty of the city, but ends up as being slightly disinteresting as a result. I’d want to create a piece with more meaning and narrative, even if just symbolic with a non-linear narrative. Paris in motion is a visually interesting piece, and I think there’s a lot of skills we could take from it and combine with a more structured piece. It’s clear that a piece like this wouldn’t be easy to create. Technically, making a hyper-lapse is no mean feat. Even in this piece, you can tell that the camera is occasionally jerky, and software has been used to stabilise the footage. It would also have needed a tremendous amount of time put in to net enough overall footage.
https://vimeo.com/46106624
Final Idea An Anxious City
Through group discussion and feedback, we came to a decision on our final idea. Using elements from a lot of our ideas, the basis is to create a powerful and tense moving image, mostly comprised of time-lapses. The main idea is to portray anxiety or a panic attack, partially through the first person, and partially through utilising the city as a metaphor. The piece will likely use a unique mix of techniques, creating a moving image that fluidly moves between the third and first person. Sound will be incredibly when it comes to creating the stressful viewing experience we are trying to create, so recording spot effects and ambience are going to be a top priority. The piece will start out as a serene morning with wide shots and a low sound level. The shots will start to move more into the city as it goes on. Sound and stressful visuals will peak in the centre of the piece, before calming down. Time should move fairly in sync, with a calmer evening drawing in as we move towards the resolution of the piece. The day should serve as a metaphor for the cycle of a panic attack, and how they can always come around again, like the cycle of a new day. Emotion and feelings are the key to our piece, we want the viewers to feel as uncomfortable and tense as anxiety sufferers are. Through sound, like heavy breathing and many layers of city sounds, the hope is that when the piece comes to an end, everyone in the room will find they are a little tense, and their heart rate is a lot higher than they realised. We want the viewers to feel relieved at the end of the piece, mirroring the relief someone would feel once their panic attack finally comes to an end.
Storyboarding
1. The piece would start in the morning, in areas with picturesque views of the sun coming up. For example, a view of or from the Clifton suspension bridge. Potentially, we could have the back of a person in the first shot, with the camera homing in on the back of their head as the first transition. This may however, give the impression that every subsequent shot is from the first person. 2. Another good view at the beginning of the piece would be from the top of cabot tower, with a view of the city and river. This calm scene would be accompanied by the sounds of birds, wind, leaves, etc. Cabot tower hours are 8am-4pm in the winter, so capturing sunrise or sunset from here could be an issue. 3. As the piece moves on, we will move gradually closer to the city. The overall noise level slowly increases, with some ambient city noise introduced. A shot from castle park over the river is a way of keeping some serenity, while slowly moving into the city life with pedestrians in the foreground and cars crossing the bridge in the background. 4. Major changing point for the piece, with anxiety ramping up rapidly within the shot. Camera high up in the city, likely on a car park roof. To help smooth the transition into anxiety, the shot could potentially start at regular speed or even in slow motion. This way we can move into the heart of the city while maintaining a certain amount of calm. When the panic hits, the slow motion footage can begin to speed up, transitioning from half normal speed, up to the speed of a time lapse. While it could seem out of place having the shot start in slow motion, having it end up at the same speed before the next shot change should keep it feeling consistent. 5. After the high up shot reaches its peak speed, the sound will build up, and the piece will dramatically cut into the next shot with the camera placed between the lanes of traffic. This is when the anxiety first reaches its peak. Noise at this point will be loud, and it seems like the perfect shot to throw the viewer into a busy overpowering space.
Storyboarding
6. After being plunged into anxiety between traffic, the piece will move to a tight and claustrophobic feeling long shot. The shot will look across multiple lanes of traffic in either direction, with a long enough lens for cars to fill the screen. This shot could potentially go back and forth between the previous couple of shots, creating a stressful viewing environment. 7. This shot is a wide open shot of inside Cabot Circus. The stress and anxiety has built up to a very high level at this point, so a busy shot filled with people makes perfect sense, especially when crowds of people can be a massive issue for some anxiety sufferers. A time-lapse in a busy mall would likely be more interesting than stressful if viewed alone, but through sound and editing, I expect a scene like this could actually become very stressful. At such a peak of stress and panic, the sound at this point won’t be too pleasant. Sound will have been building up throughout the piece thus far, and at this point it will be fairly loud. Ambient noise, conversations, footsteps, heartbeats and heavy breathing will all be overlapping, hopefully creating a sense of dread in the viewer that tries to show the feelings of a panic attack. 8.This shot will be within the crowds of people seen in the previous shot. Much like the parts of the piece with traffic, the narrative may flick back and forth between this shot and the previous one. As well as the overlapping sound effects, fast cuts will be needed to help create a stressful viewing experience. This keeps the viewer on their toes, and fast shot changes will naturally increase the tempo of the piece, which will in turn naturally create stress. Overlapping footage may also be a possibility here. As audio starts to overlay over one another, the video could do the same, eventually creating a scene with nearly inaudible audio and hard to make out visuals. While creating stress, this could do a good job at mirroring the impossible task of focusing during a panic attack. 9. This shot is a potential comedown for our simulated panic attack. With the camera starting within a crown, it would start to move back through the crowd at an increasing rate. While the camera movement speeds up, the sound continues to rise and overlap. As the camera reaches the edge of the crowd, the sounds reaches it’s absolute peak of volume and overlap. The camera will then escape the busy crowd. As this happens, the sound will dramatically cut, and the viewer will get some long awaited relief from the tension. This feeling we will try and create in a viewer will hopefully be similar to the relief felt after the comedown of a panic attack. The shot will fade to black, with just slowing breathing remaining. The piece will not end here, and will move on to a calmer third act. The rest of the shots may be in similar locations to the early shots, but later in the day. The sound will be fairly calm for the remainder of the piece, with a quiet night drawing in, slowing the piece down before the end, but also representing the daily cycle of panic for some people.
Research Dziga Vertov - The Man with the Movie Camera
Dziga Vertov’s The Man with the Movie Camera Is surprisingly relevant to our film, and parts of it have been quite an inspiration to me in terms of what I would want our piece to play like. Something that it showed me is that various playback speeds can work surprisingly well together, and are strung together through good use of sound. Being over an hour long, obviously not every bit of the film is relevant. What I’ve really taken inspiration from are the frantic city scenes. Even when nothing of interest is happening, the use of dramatic music and occasionally sped up footage creates quite a stressful viewing experience. In our piece we hope to take this to the next even further. Where Vertov was making a hectic and exciting, yet stressful city, we want to overload the viewer with noise and fast and messy visuals. Where The Man with the Movie Camera was successful in creating manageable levels of stress, we want to see if we can achieve the same success with levels of stress that aren’t so easy to deal with. The mix of shots creating stress is also something we’ll be using. A busy sped up city in a wide shot, cutting in intermittently to closer shots, creating even more stressful visuals. The Man with the Movie Camera doesn’t have too much we can take away from in terms of visuals in my opinion. It’s black and white aesthetic just stems from colour being extremely difficult at the time, so it’s hard for me to know what he would have done with colour if he’d had the chance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z97Pa0ICpn8
Research Anxiety
Portrayal of anxiety or mental health issues can be a sensitive issue, but I feel that due to a lot of first hand experience, myself and my group are put in a nonexploitative position. Anxiety in it’s simplest form is just a feeling/emotion, and one that almost everyone will have experienced at some point. The way I would describe anxiety would be nervousness and worry, along with physical effects, like feeling sick and having a tight chest. Most people have experienced this at some point, so it’s not really what we are focusing on. Naturally, general anxiety is heavily linked to stress. A lot of stress and anxiety building up within a short period of time can cause a panic attack. To accurately represent this, I hope to create a fairly stressful atmosphere for the viewer to begin with, eventually ramping up to a loud and distressing messy climax, that creates a real feeling of dread. Creating every feeling and symptom from a panic attack just isn’t possible through moving image and sound, but the experience will be a lot closer to the real thing than what’s possible with a photograph. Panic attacks have a lot of symptoms, and the exact experience can vary from person to person. The box on the left lists the possible symptoms, with at least Panic Attack Specifier four of the listed symptoms Note: Symptoms are presented for the purpose of identifying a panic attack; however, having to be experienced panic attack is not a mental disorder and cannot be coded. Panic attacks can occur in the for it to be considered context of any anxiety disorder as well as other mental disorders (e.g., depressive disorders, a panic attack. This is posttraumatic stress disorder, substance use disorders) and some medical conditions lifted directly from DSM(e.g., cardiac, respiratory, vestibular, gastrointestinal). When the presence of a panic attack is identified, it should be noted as a specifier (e.g., “posttraumatic stress disorder 5, Section II, Anxiety with panic attacks”). For panic disorder, the presence of panic attack is contained within Disorders, p.214. the criteria for the disorder and panic attack is not used as a specifier. I find it to be a very An abrupt surge of intense fear or intense discomfort that reaches a peak within minutes, and during which time four (or more) of the following symptoms occur: accurate description of Note: The abrupt surge can occur from a calm state or an anxious state. panic attack symptoms, having personally 1. Palpitations, pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate. experienced 10 or 11 of 2. Sweating. those listed. The only real 3. Trembling or shaking. 4. Sensations of shortness of breath or smothering. symptom not listed that 5. Feelings of choking. I have experienced many 6. Chest pain or discomfort. times is extremely blurred 7. Nausea or abdominal distress. 8. Feeling dizzy, unsteady, light-headed, or faint. vision. I know this is 9. Chills or heat sensations. something many people 10. Paresthesias (numbness or tingling sensations). experience, and could 11. Derealization (feelings of unreality) or depersonalization (being detached from oneself). potentially be used in our 12. Fear of losing control or “going crazy.” 13. Fear of dying. piece to good effect.
Research Maisie Crow - Hungry Maisie Crow’s short film Hungry is very relevant to our ideas, not so much aesthetically, but fairly strongly conceptually. There are a plethora of differences between her piece and what we are hoping to achieve, but I feel that we could learn a lot nonetheless. For a start, what she’s focusing on, Prader– Willi syndrome, is a actually a genetic disorder and not a mental health problem. Even with this difference, in both cases the affliction has a big impact on the victim’s life, and both are sensitive topics. A major difference between her piece and our idea is the personality behind it. In her case, her multimedia piece is about a family in particular. This connection to a real family is where the piece gets a lot of its emotion from - the sense that this is a real story, something that is actually happening right now. Our piece is planned more of a metaphor with slight elements of personification. This process negates a lot of potential emotions that viewers may feel watching our piece, which is why we’ve chosen to focus on a different set of emotions entirely. Where Maisie is making you feel emotional about the suffering family in her piece, we want our viewers to feel emotions more like you are the sufferer in a piece. Despite such a huge difference, our idea and her piece have a powerful common ground: Sound. The sound in Hungry is extremely powerful, from the emotional narration to the clear sound effects. Sound goes along with a lot of the visuals in the piece; a clock is on screen and we hear ticking, we see a kitchen and hear a microwave. This attention to detail with clear and realistic sound is surprisingly powerful when played back in a quiet environment. We’ll be taking a lot of inspiration from the sound in Maisie’s piece, isolated sounding spot effects and such, and hopefully we can achieve an experience nearly as powerful as hers. The visuals in her piece - a strong contrasty traditional b&w, don’t seem relevant to our piece at first, but they certainly could be. We didn’t initially consider a black and white aesthetic, but after seeing the impact it can have, it will definitely be something we have to try out and see in post production.
https://vimeo.com/5717103
Development Initial Time-Lapses
Our first set of time lapses are more likely to go in nearer the end of the film, due to the time of day. It might seem odd shooting in a random order, but these initial time-lapses were actually meant to be more of a technical test rather than shots intended for the final film. We went out as soon as we could to start testing, not too worried about the sun being down. Our main intention was to find out what sorts of interval lengths we would need between shots, and how long it would take us to get certain amounts of footage. Setting up the time-lapses was a fairly easy process, just requiring the correct exposure for a single photo. If set to manual, the camera would just use the same settings for every photo in the time-lapse. Being at night was actually great for experimenting with the timelapse, as it allowed each photo to be over a second long, leading to a lovely blurred video when played back. After seeing our results we were actually really surprised with how good they looked. They are definitely good enough quality to go in our final piece, but we’d just have to figure out where they would fit in. Our busy stressful traffic and pedestrian scenes will be in the middle of the piece, and in daytime, so these don’t fit the bill. I could see them fitting in to the later past of the piece, after it’s gotten a lot calmer. http://videohostuwe.tumblr.com/post/140142871892
http://videohostuwe.tumblr.com/post/140142881178
Research Time-Lapse Mechanics Creating a time-lapse can be surprisingly complex, and can be done in multiple ways. A simple way to create a time-lapse is simply to speed up recorded footage. In order to keep playback speed at 25 frames per second, many frames are lost, and the end result will likely look the same as a time-lapse of images. While this process is simple, generally it should be avoided for a few reasons, the first being space. Most of the footage frames are lost in output to time-lapse, so the camera is effectively capturing way more information than it needs. Secondly, the camera sensor is constantly on when recording. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it may take it’s toll on battery life. Cameras like DSLRs can also only record for a certain amount of time, usually 20-30 mins. This will make long time-lapses an issue, as there has to be breaks within footage. With all this, I wouldn’t say video footage for timelapses is a good idea unless the camera doesn’t have any features to create a time lapse. Speaking of which, these features are a dedicated time-lapse mode, and interval shooting mode. Interval shooting is fairly simple, taking a photo every so often, depending on how you set it. You input the time between photos, and total about of photos to take, and the camera takes the images without further input needed. You’re left with a lot of very large photos, and have to put them all into an editing software to export as a time-lapse. When using interval shooting to create a time-lapse, some maths are required. If you know your export framerate, it’s very simple to work out how many shots you’ll need. For example: I know my output is going to be at 25 frames per second. This means I need 25 frames for every second of footage. If I want a 15 second time-lapse clip, I’ll need a total of 375 images. The last step is the interval, which determines the speed. For a clip of cars and people moving quickly, an interval of about 5 seconds per photo will suffice. 5 seconds multiplied by 375 frames gives us about 31 minutes of standing around. If it was a time-lapse of a much slower moving subject, like slow clouds or the sun, a much larger interval is needed, perhaps as long as 30 seconds per shot. With a 30 second interval between photographs, 15 seconds of footage is going take a little over 3 hours. You start to run into other issues at this point though, like the overall light level of the scene changing. If the camera is set to auto, the exposure will change slightly from frame to frame, and is going to look jerky when viewed. If it’s set to manual (which it probably should be) the frame could potentially go almost black after a cloud blocks the sun. Using the dedicated time-lapse mode is similar to interval shooting, but all the photos are automatically complied into a video at the end. The maths of the footage length are also often done for you. This is generally the best overall method of recording a time-lapse, with a good balance of speed and results. Using interval shooting can hold significant advantages however, like frame size and editing potential. As interval shooting yields images as results, they can be batch edited as photographs, which gives far more visual control over the images, while being less destructive of the footage as well. A huge advantage of interval shooting is output frame size. A time-lapse created with the time-lapse feature will output a video limited to what footage the camera can create, which will likely be 1920x1080 resolution. A time lapse created using photographs can potentially be as big as the photographs, which may be as large as 4K or 6K resolution. While this resolution may not be needed, it allows any smaller video output to move around the time-lapse, zooming in and out the frame without the image becoming pixelated.
Research Recording - Ambient, Spot Effects and Breathing
With sound being such a huge part of our moving image piece, using a good microphone is incredibly important. Our footage and sound will be completely separate, so using a dedicated recorder is a better option than using an on camera microphone to record sound. The Tascam DR-100 is surprisingly daunting to use for such a simple purpose, thus a workshop was required. After beginning using the Tascam, it’s immediately obvious how good of a microphone it is. You can hear everything around you at a much more sensitive level. Getting good sound effects is fairly easy with such good kit. With just a couple of days recordings, I recorded a variety of useful sounds for our piece. These include: Ambient traffic, crowd, and general city noise, conversations, breathing, footsteps, birds, water etc. Through looping and overlaying these sounds, I think it will be possible to make our entire piece’s soundtrack through just sounds and ambience. I put a lot of work into getting good breathing sound effects, and I think it will show. Breathing is related to anxiety in a lot of ways, especially when experiencing a panic attack. People naturally hyperventilate, which can have a huge negative impact on anxiety. Hyperventilating causes you to take in too much oxygen, leaving you with a lack of carbon dioxide. Your brain needs an amount of carbon dioxide, and a lack of it can make you feel like it’s hard to breathe. This fear can lead to panic, and more hyperventilating, which in turn makes the whole cycle worse. As a rule, you should be breathing fairly slowly, and trying to breathe out for longer than you breathe in when you are anxious. The breathing in our piece will be more like hyperventilation, which is leading to a higher and higher feeling of panic and fear. nopanic.org.uk states “About 60% of panic attacks are accompanied by hyperventilation and many people suffering from anxiety over-breathe even when they think they are relaxed.” It makes it clear how important and significant breathing is, and I personally know this to be accurate, though I’m unsure on the percentage. I have personally had a doctor say to me something along the lines of “I’ve been watching your
breathing as we’ve been talking. You took nine breaths to my three.”
http://www.nopanic.org.uk/important-breathe-properly-help-anxiety/
Research Adobe Premiere Pro
We’ll be using Adove Premiere Pro as our editing software for our multimedia piece. Premiere Pro is fairly complex compared to a lot of other video editing software, but is generally considered the go-to editing software for moving image. I have prior experience with the software, so I’ll be happy to act as the main editor of the piece with input from my group. We’ve had multiple tutorials in Premiere, in which I’ve picked up additional skills. I’ve used things like transitions, in and out points, and file organisation, which have drastically sped up my work flow.
Development Continued Time-Lapse Work and Recording
Our second set of time-lapses we shot in the park in daytime, trying to get some shots for the quiet beginning of the piece. Using two cameras with different lenses on, we were able to get two shots in the same amount of time. The closer shot was taken with an 85mm, and captures a closer shot of the river and path along it. We can see the people on the path, boats in the rover, and even cars crossing the bridge in the background. The shot from the other camera, while pointed in the same place, is completely different. Taken with a wide angle lens, most of the frame is filled with grass and clouds. When we recorded the wide angle time-lapse we used a longer interval between photographs, meaning the clouds are much faster in the resulting footage. These two shots work well together, and can function like a time-lapse version of a standard cut in/out.
http://videohostuwe.tumblr.com/post/140142710904
http://videohostuwe.tumblr.com/post/140142679816
At the same time as our time-lapses, I was recording a large amount of ambient sound. I went for a walk while it was recording, and managed to get a variety of sounds. I recorded my own footsteps, breathing, cars driving past, crossing beeping, etc. I’ve also gone down to the waters edge in the shot and recorded boats passing and water splashing against the rocks. These sounds came out incredibly well and will form a strong soundtrack for the video to sit on top of. The day was very successful and I’m glad we started filming so early on. We’re getting important shots and sounds for our piece, and still have a huge amount of time left.
Research Matthew Donaldson
Matthew Donaldson has gained a massive amount of attention for his slow motion short films. They might not seem to carry a huge amount of relevance to our piece at first, but as we start to think about the possibility of slow motion along with time-lapses, it’s certainly something we should look at. I believe Matthew Donaldson’s work is filmed using a Phantom Flex line camera. These cameras capture incredibly high speed footage, and aren’t realistically something we could ever consider using. They are quoted as costing from $50,000-$150,000, and seem to cost as much as $1,000-$3,000 to rent for a single day. Though we cannot come close to achieving the level of slow motion shown here, it’s a good example of what it can do. Along with fitting sound, slow footage can make an incredible sense of calm, which would be perfect for the earlier and later scenes in our film. At this point I’m not sure exactly how slow we could get footage, but I know we could get smooth half speed footage as DLSRs
can often shoot at 1080p at 50 or 60 frames per second.
http://www.abelcine.com/store/phantom-flexhigh-speed-digital-camera/ http://www.phantomflexcamera.com/rental-rates. html
http://www.matthewdonaldson.com/film
Research Forced/Low Frame Rate Slow Motion - Ben Ingham, Quentin Tarantino
Continuing on the topic of slow motion, Ben Ingham’s short film Of Steel had some relevant shots early on. In a scene where a bike is being welded and worked on, the footage appears particularly jittery. The piece has been slowed down, to the point where the frame rate has started to drop leading to the footage appearing slightly jumpy. Usually, this would look awful, but it doesn’t. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why it works, but it could have something to do with such abstracted visuals - a huge bright green flame filling the screen. It could also be due to the dirty and muddy aesthetic. It’s dark and gritty, the low frame rate works to enhance the atmosphere created by the scene.
https://vimeo.com/67876774
https://youtu.be/q2Xi3ioasik?t=19s
Another example of low frame rate slow motion working well is in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. In the opening sequence, once the music starts up, the shots go into a choppy slow motion. Once again, somehow, it works. It’s hard to tell if it’s due to the reputation of Tarantino, or the context of the film, or both. Like Of Steel, the scene is gritty and dark, but in a completely different way. Rather than being physically dark, it seems indicative of a gritty lifestyle, representing crime and gang life. It’s possible that as a viewer we only give the piece this credit because of trust in the director, but it’s hard not to accept that it looks fine, even when trying to disregard the popularity of the film. Either way, these pieces make it clear that choppy slow motion can work, but it depends on circumstance. I definitely think this is something we could potentially use, so it’s something that I’m going to try.
Research Anxiety Continued
Anxiety and mental health problems are things that can have triggers. Some people can have anxiety triggered more easily than others, and by different things. For example, for me and many others I’m sure, anxiety can work as a vicious cycle. As I write this, I’m thinking about anxiety and symptoms which in turn brings back memories of own experiences. This helps me provide a description, but also puts me on edge. My hands are shaky, and I can’t help picking my nails. My breathing rate has likely increased. I often find myself looking around the room, opening up websites over and over again. While these seem like procrastination, and certainly have the same effect, they are more of a nervous habit. Sufferers of anxiety and panic disorders are often not taken seriously, and their conditions trivialised by misuse of language. There are two very common examples of this. The first is OCD. I often find people attributing their neatness to ‘their OCD.’ Obsessive compulsive disorder is a debilitating anxiety disorder, in which people obsess over something, often of no real significance, and are met with huge levels of anxiety until they do something about it. This cycle repeats and can make people’s lives extremely difficult. The other commonly abused term is ‘panic attack.’ It’s often used simply to convey panic, when in reality a panic attack is far more than that. It might not seem like a big deal, but it can cause others to dismiss your horrible condition as “just worrying a lot.” On their own, misused language isn’t the end of the world. However, along with the general population having a very uninformed and dismissive view of mental health problems, it can become incredibly frustrating. Our piece wasn’t made to raise awareness of anxiety disorders, but I have no doubt it could serve this purpose. If people are significantly stressed out and uncomfortable watching the piece, they might think a little more deeply about anxiety disorders. On the other hand, we don’t want people to think that our piece is actually an accurate representation. The feelings of a panic attack aren’t really possible to create without actually having one, so we don’t want our piece to undermine the seriousness of panic attacks. I think our piece will do a good job of making people understand how horrible panic attacks are, and as knowledge rises, so will the amount of treatment etc available. Sadly, because of the sense of desperation people can have when in a horrible pit of anxiety, there are many people out there trying to use this for their own gain. When people are desperate, they will do a lot to try and get better. Waiting on a doctors appointment can be hell, so most people quickly turn to the web. It won’t take too long to stumble upon a website like ‘Calm Clinic’ which appears to be help website for anxiety. It has what seems to be an in depth test on your levels of anxiety. After baiting you in, and making you feel like help could lie ahead, it turns out to be a ploy to get you to purchase their expensive guide on how to use a technique they have made to get rid of anxiety. The whole thing is a scam designed to prey on those must vulnerable.
Research Anxiety Continued With anxiety being such a wide subject, we can only really focus on a part of it. While we’re looking at panic attacks, even that is a bit too wide a topic for us to cover it all. People have panic attacks for a variety of reasons, many of which are completely different from each other. Probably the most common type of panic attack is one that seems to be about nothing at all, but is actually triggered by stress. You may not even know it. Even if you don’t think you’re stressed, you could be a lot more than you realise. The same can be said for tiredness. Being extremely tired often leads to stress, and both will happily catalyse together into a strong panic attack that seems to be about nothing. Panic attacks can also be caused by drugs/alcohol, as well as hangovers from them. Even people who don’t usually experience any anxiety may feel extremely on edge after a night out. A person with underlying anxiety issues can easily go into a full panic attack in the same circumstance. Panic attacks could also be triggered by something more specific or personal. Something associated with a memory, event, etc. I personally had many panic attacks about the physical appearance of my surroundings. I’d panic about the world looking, different, which would then come true, as derealisation is a symptom of having a panic attack. Anxiety makes itself a lot worse, any many people’s anxiety and panic attacks can be driven by their fear of having a panic attack. In our piece, we’ll be focusing more on a panic attack caused by stress and being in a stressful environment, in this case city traffic and crowds. Part of a panic attack is the fight or flight reaction. This is a surge of adrenaline that your body gives you, in order to fight off or escape from an attacker of some kind. The problem is, there isn’t anything to fight with, so only flight is left. This may be why when having a panic attack you will likely feel like you have to escape. You may feel claustrophobic and trapped, or just want to stand up and do something. Along with all this comes your body moving blood away from your limbs and into your torso as protection. This will makes you feel as if your arms and legs are getting cold and tingly, and is generally a horrible experience, especially because it lets you know you may be about to have a panic attack. Sadly, this is not something we can make a viewer experience. Something we can however, is tunnel vision. Tunnel vision is something often experienced when having a panic attack, and something that we could try and use in our piece. It’s a strange experience and you may not even notice it at first. It’s not like you physically can’t use your peripheral vision - you can, it’s just like your brain isn’t registering it. Another feature of the panic attack that I think we’ll be able to recreate is actually relief. It’s hard to describe exactly how good it feels, but the sense of relief when a panic attack stops is the strongest I’ve ever felt it. Panic attacks are physically and mentally exhausting, but the sense of relief afterwards, the realisation that you aren’t going insane, helps to keep you going. This sense of relief is probably something we can share with viewers, giving them a sense of relief after the tense and dramatic climax of our piece.
By Jvnkfood - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31481946
Development Editing Techniques and Process
Our piece will likely use a variety of techniques to achieve the result we want. These techniques change a lot depending on what we are trying to create. In the earlier and later parts of the piece, we will be trying to create a sense of calm, and our editing will reflect that. The sound will be quieter, the transitions between shots softer. We’ll likely just use dissolves and fades/dips for these scenes. Dissolves are a good way to transition between shots in the same location, with a quick dip to black being a good way to change locations. Dissolves aren’t really used in feature films due to sometimes looking a bit cheap and unprofessional, but for a calmer part of a photographer’s art video, I think they work great. When the piece changes location, the sound has to change in accordance with the picture. For this, I simply used an audio crossfade of around the same length, so the sounds blends together at the same time as the pictures. The piece will start off silent, and the audio will slowly fade up. I’ll start to add audio tracks one at a time as the piece starts to get stressful.
Development 25 and 60 FPS Filming
I went out alone to try and get some extra footage to use in our piece. At this point I didn’t shoot any time-lapses, but instead focused on regular footage. I wanted to have a larger variety so we could have the piece made up of a mix of regular, slow and fast motion clips on top of the time-lapses we were recording. With this shoot I tried to focus on imagining the busy scenes, so I put a lot of focus on traffic. When shooting I was picturing the busy centre of our piece, with a lot of footage of traffic sped up. I got shots from various angles and places, like from overpasses, across lanes of traffic, low down at car wheels, etc. A lot of the clips are very short in length, but I doubt this will be an issue as I picture these shots cutting back and forth at extreme speed. I shot in 25 and 60fps to try and get a variety of footage. Shooting at 60 let’s me comfortably go below 50% playback speed without footage becoming jerky, though as I talked about previously, this may not be a problem. A drawback to the 60fps shooting is the fact that the footage comes out in a lower quality. This doesn’t seem like a major issue, as the quality is still high enough to use. Getting all these clips didn’t actually take me a massive amount of time, even though it’s likely that they will make up a lot of the second act of the piece. Most of the shots I took weren’t storyboarded, but I don’t see this as a big problem. The storyboard was for more major shots, whereas these were just a large number of short shots that won’t have a lot of screen time.
Development 25 and 60 FPS Filming
Research 2001, along with other iconic feature films have really cemented Kubrick as a visual genius, among filmmakers and photographers alike. Something that sets 2001 apart from photography, is the remarkable use of sound. Similarly to the moving image piece we are currently working on, sound is an incredibly powerful Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is an incredible example of the power of a photographer’s film. For me, it bridges a gap between moving image, photography, and video feature. This becomes apparent when listened to the haunting original score, and installation art. It’s almost surprising to me that it even exists as a feature film. At face value, the disconcerting voice of HAL 9000.
Stanley Kubrick - 2001: A Space Odyssey
it seems boring as a regular movie, with a whole lot of nothing. It sits at around two and a The symbolism in 2001: A Space Odyssey is quite something. The famous half hours in length, a lot of which is filled up with beautiful ambience. This certainly gives it black monolith appears at multiple points in the film, always accompanied by the distinct feeling of a work of art. its own terrifying soundtrack. Visually, the containing shots look surreal, almost Kubrick did an amazing job of using the moving image medium to expand on the photograph. He’s used the incredible visuals of photos, along with the power of sound, strung together with an unbelievably symbolic narrative. Kubrick’s photographic prowess is clear as day, with massive attention to detail, and a huge amount of well composed, symmetry obsessed shots. Likely due to it being an earlier video work of his, it’s obvious that the movie was an opportunity to make a piece heavily inspired by photographic techniques and visuals over a simple narrative.
looking like a Tim Walker piece. As a first time viewer, it’s unlikely you’re going to know exactly what the relevance is. The monolith is intentionally ambiguous as well as creepy, and Kubrick has almost taken in out of its context within the extended story, and used it as a device for atmosphere and effect. The film begins with over two minutes of black, accompanied by music. While it was common for older films to start with an overture, many theorise that the black at the beginning is perhaps a metaphor for the monolith, or even a close up view of the monolith itself. The actual intent remains unclear, but this is a great example of how Kubrick has used 2001 to make people think, likely more than his photography ever could.
Research Stanley Kubrick - 2001: A Space Odyssey
As 2001 is a feature film, it’s unclear to me exactly what the creation process would have been. All of the iconic shots would undoubtedly have been storyboarded and heavily thought about, but whether they were done so by Kubrick or Geoffrey Unsworth, the DoP, I’m unsure. I’m going to assume that the shots were Kubrick’s vision, with the DoP on hand to help achieve the shot. When setting up, I’d imagine that it’s awfully similar to the construction of a photograph, framing/composition being the most important thing. The shots in 2001: A Space Odyssey are simply gorgeous, and it’s regarded by many as one of the most visually beautiful films ever created. The use of colour in the images on this page are a great example. Almost 50 years from original release, 2001’s visual fidelity holds up today.
Development Final Traffic Time-Lapses
Our final time-lapses of traffic turned out to be very successful. We shot Bond Street in both directions simultaneously. The location and weather matched up with time-lapses and footage I had recorded previously. Some of these previous clips were from the overpass up the road, some from the car park, and some of passing cars. Adding these two new time-lapses to our collection really helped bring the scenes together, as a lot of shots are effectively linked, within view of one another. The time-lapses themselves came out very well, and both look good. Being so busy they might not be played for that long, but I think that just goes as a testament to how much work we are willing to do for such a small amount of footage. Both directions in traffic were well composed, with a lot of interesting things going on. The shot going with traffic contains both a close up view of traffic and people using a crossing, with more cars heading in the other direction in the background. A lot is going on, with a fast flow of traffic coming to an instant halt to let people across the road. The other shot has the camera facing into traffic, coming right at the camera. If anything could sum up anxiety and embarrassment in a single shot, this is it. As we set up the tripod and camera to start the time-lapse a woman’s car broke down, directly in front of us. Already she would have had the anxiety and embarrassment from blocking a lane of traffic, but having a camera right in front of her would have made it that much worse. At first we weren’t sure if it ruined the shot, but personally I think it adds to it.
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Development Final Traffic Time-Lapses The shot here on the left is one I recorded just prior to the others, but it’s one of the first planned shots of the piece. Photographically, it’s not exactly gorgeous, but it does a good job of tying all the other shots together. It, along with a couple of others give a kind of overall view of the areas, meaning the closer in shots have a lot more context surrounding them. The other shots are taken in the same place but of different scenes. The road shot is further away from the others, but serves as a midpoint between the roads and the pedestrians. The shot of the crane would work better as a calmer city scene. The crane is a clear sign of a lot going on, but visually the shot is a lot cleaner, and works more like a picturesque view of a busy city.
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Development Final Pedestrian Time-Lapses
Our pedestrian time-lapses and recordings work well, and are intended for the frantic climax. The wider shot is a time-lapse of people in all directions. While the time-lapse was filming, I took a lot of video clips in the same area. They range from low down shots of people’s feet, to out of focus shots of people walking, to frantic pans back and forth across the screen. Taking multiple recordings of the same area is great for getting lots of short shots for the climax. An issue I started to run into a lot, especially when panning, was rolling shutter. Because the frame renders at the top before the bottom, whenever an object or the camera is moving very quickly, they will appear slanted. I don’t personally think that it’s an issue, as it only shows up in very small clips, but it’s definitely something to be aware of.
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These clips were very successful overall, and are certainly important to the film despite having little more than a couple of seconds on the screen. I really would have loved to have managed to get some footage on a busier and sunnier day. Through playback speed and editing techniques, it’s not difficult to make the street feel busy and stressful, even with relatively few people around. I would have preferred to have had the shots in Cabot Circus, but different staff were allowing us different levels of access, and it became frustratingly difficult to make shots containing people inside. http://videohostuwe.tumblr.com/post/140224771858
Development Black & White VS Colour
The decision to use colour, B&W, or a mix is a difficult one. Black and white can certainly be powerful, but can also be limiting. We could potentially use a mix of B&W and colour, but this carries a big risk of the overall experience feeling disjointed and messy as a result. A really strong conceptual reason to consider playing with colour is it’s relation to anxiety. Many people, when experiencing panic attacks experience a lack, or even an over-saturation of colour. This is certainly something we could mirror with our piece, but personally I’m not sure how well it would work. It would be hard to decide when to go into black and white and when to come out, but that could be figured out. We’d want people to know it relates to having a panic attack, but we wouldn’t want people to think that it makes you see in black and white. I think perhaps some of the overall coherence would be lost when using a mix of colour and b&w. A reason to consider using black and white, potentially the entire way through, is for a more dramatic visual aesthetic. Black and white is often used for more serious topics, and generally carries more weight with a viewer. It may not be quite right in our case though. While we are looking at a serious topic, we are telling it more through a story of abstracted visuals and sounds, rather than something more personal.
Development Final Techniques and Editing Process
The later stage of the piece has some drastically different techniques at play compared to the earlier stages. The most obvious change is the disappearance of dissolves and the appearance of a lot of fast sharp cuts. This speeds up the tempo of the piece massively, increasing stress as a result. The faster cuts are also accompanied by much sounder sound. Sound tracks start to overlap one another, leading to a messy overpowering soundtrack that’s hard to listen to. Hyperventilating has been a huge part of this section, and took a lot of time and attention to get right. The timing of each breath has been synced up with each cut, resulting in a piece that changes over and over again every half second or so. It’s rhythmic, and the viewer can tell when the next cut is going to come, but this doesn’t make it any less forgiving to watch. Eventually the breathing and cuts get even faster, eventually reaching a peak resulting in most audio and video cutting out, resulting in just a buzz. Another technique I used in the climax of our piece was a masked blur. The image is blurred, but a feathered mask in the centre of the frame keeps the middle sharp. I think this is a good representation of tunnel vision, and is the most like what I’ve experienced. It doesn’t just appear in the clips suddenly, but gradually increases after every cut. While this is happening, sound is also building up, ending up with many layers of audio playing over one another. This stage of the piece was tremendously time consuming to make, and doesn’t last very long, but really brings the piece to life in my opinion.
Evaluation This project was quite a change of pace for me, but I think we’ve produced some good work nonetheless. I’ve worked once with moving image before, but not as a group. All three of us in the group were dedicated to working, which has really allowed us to succeed with the project. We all brought ideas to the table, and ended up mixing two of them together. Initially, two of us had ideas to do time-lapse style videos. I suggested this as I was unsure of what the group was willing to commit to, and personally I’d be more likely to create a more abstracted and arty type of media. Suffering for major anxiety issues, I had a backup idea for a distressing contemporary art piece, filled with stressful sounds and strung together with an uneasy atmosphere. This idea was a lot more interesting than a time-lapse, but I didn’t want to force the group into something they didn’t want to do.
We ended up actually mixing the idea of anxiety and panic attacks with time-lapses of the city, using Bristol as a kind of metaphor for a panic attack. It was actually a fairly strange process, as you’re recording what feel like regular time-lapses, but they are completely transformed with the addition of sound. We had a simple storyboard to help us with the shooting, and while we didn’t stick to it all that closely, it was a huge help for getting to grips with the narrative and visualising what the piece would play out like. Many of the shots we actually did use, with a lot of other shots in between. The story-boarding process was incredibly helpful for planning out the shots, more so than I initially realised. Going back and viewing them, we used almost all the shots we planned to. The storyboarding was actually very helpful as motivation also, we instinctively treated it like a checklist of what was left to do, which encouraged us to get out and shoot.
A lot of our footage came out very well, but personally I do feel that there are a few issues. Due to the short time frame we had in which to complete the project, I feel that there’s a bit of an issue with contingency. The weather is very temperamental at this time of year, and some shots are wet while the previous was gorgeous and sunny. The speed of the shots means that it’s not actually all that obvious, but some viewers may pick up on it. The biggest problem I have with the piece is the fluctuation in visual quality. To get footage at 60 frames per second to slow down, the camera recorded in what appears to be significantly worse quality. The resolution was the same, but the footage just doesn’t hold up. As well as this, one of the group cameras was set to record in 720p instead of 1080p. This lower resolution isn’t too noticeable, but some shots are significantly worse quality, and I think it shows in the final piece. Because of the strength of our sound, I don’t think this holds us back too much, but if there was anything that I would want to change most, that would be it. Despite these issues, I think our project and piece has been very successful all things considered. The time we had was fairly short, but we still managed to get a lot of work done. Working as a group can be a real issue if you aren’t organised, but I think we all showed commitment and worked well as a group. I believe we successfully achieved what we set out to do, which was to create a powerful, stressful and dramatic piece of contemporary photography multimedia. Having an impact on the viewer was our main goal, and I think our piece will achieve that.